


Mandyville

by lordjohnmarbury



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Female Characters, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Mandy is 100x more appealing if you make her gay, Mandy is a lesbian, Mandyville, Multi, did I mention everyone is gay....?, is actually a lesbian commune... well not really but there are lots of lesbians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-08 16:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordjohnmarbury/pseuds/lordjohnmarbury
Summary: What if Mandy wasn't actually just the annoying character everyone hates but inexplicably gets dropped from the show never to be heard from again? What if Mandy was actually Not Terrible? This is my take on Mandyville, giving her the backstory that she maybe sort of deserved.





	1. Chapter 1

“OK, I’ll admit it.” Mandy shaded her eyes against the bright summer sun, starting to sink a little in the early evening sky. “Vermont in the summer is surprisingly nice.” She leaned against the rough wooden fence post and surveyed the thick green forests and even brighter green expanses of undulating fields stretching out in all directions as far as she could see. Mandy raised a cigarette to her mouth and savoured the view as she inhaled. She was normally more of a city person but had to admit that there was something to be said for how relaxing the countryside was. Or maybe that was just the nicotine. Either way, she was enjoying herself today, which was more than could be said for her average workday. She’d only shouted at two- ok, maybe three people so far today.  
“You didn’t think Vermont would be nice?” Her smoking companion and college roommate, Stella, cocked her head at Mandy and grinned.  
“I didn’t think it would be warm. I thought it would cold, and cold weather automatically makes a place not nice. Why do you think I went to USC?”  
“Its reputation for having a great art history programme and close proximity to plenty of hot Californian beach babes?” Stella deadpanned. Stella today was wearing a burgundy suit and navy tie but on less formal occasions was known for exclusively wearing flannels shirts paired with Levis. Mandy was quietly grateful that Stella’s preference for other butches and her own taste in femmes meant that there was no chance of their friendship ever being ruined by a drunken one night stand. Instead, since college, the pair had been bound together by fierce butch-femme solidarity and even though they now lived on opposite coasts, with Stella staying in California and Mandy bouncing between New York and D.C., they remained close.  
“Can you really believe Rachel and Ulrica are getting married?” Mandy pointedly changed the subject.  
“If you can’t believe they’re getting married, that’s probably because they’re not.”  
“Civil union, whatever. You know, I am surrounded every day at work by snarkers—” Mandy corrected herself indignantly.  
“Snarkers? Is that even a word?” Stella grinned.  
“Ok, that’s it, we need to trade jobs.” Mandy rolled her eyes. “You would fit in perfectly at the White House.”  
Stella’s face shifted to a more serious expression. “Is it getting any better? You sounded so stressed last time we spoke on the phone.”  
Mandy considered putting on a brave face but she knew she couldn’t lie to her oldest friend. “Stressed would be an understatement. I spend months trying to get anyone to listen to me, but a building full of sexist old men, of course they dismiss me time and time again. Finally I get my big break and I fucked it up.” She ground what was left of her cigarette against the heel of her shoe, dropped it to the grass and shakily lit a second one.   
“I told the President to use a mediator in a hostage situation and he got shot. That man’s life is on my conscience!” Mandy kicked out at the fence post as she wiped the angry tears away from her eyes.   
“And you know what the worst, most fucked up part of this whole situation is? That’s not even the thing I feel worst about! I care more about the fact that I have to stay in the closet than what happened to the FBI guy. I’m so fucking selfish.”  
Stella took one last drag from her cigarette before stubbing it out too.   
“Nobody says you have to stay in this job, Mandy,” she finally said with a gentleness to her voice Mandy had rarely heard before. “If it’s making you feel like this, then leave. Come to San Francisco! The best place in the country to be a lesbian! Get yourself a nice job in technology or entertainment that will pay way better than you’re getting now, find yourself a cute surfer girlfriend and come and enjoy the sun! There’s no obligation to stay in a job that’s destroying you, even if it is the White House. You don’t owe Jed Bartlet and his homophobic administration a dime. At least think about it?”  
“I’ll think about it.” Mandy nodded. She blew out a puff of smoke and nodded towards the farmhouse behind them. “We better go back inside or we’ll miss the wedding.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mandy let herself forget about work, the White House, D.C.- all of it- for the next couple of hours. The brides looked beautiful, the venue was beautiful, the food was good, and there was plenty of champagne to be drunk. Worn out from exhuberant drunken dancing and singing on the dance floor at the centre of the barn that was acting as the venue for the reception, Mandy made her way to one of the tables at the side of the room, flopped down in a chair and slid her feet out of her high heels. Rubbing her sore soles with one hand, she fished her cell phone out of her bag on the table. She’d left her pager behind for the wedding but had compromised by bringing her cell phone with her just in case anyone from the White House desperately needed her, although she had made everyone she worked with swear not to disturb her unless it was a national emergency. This was her best friends’ wedding and she was not going to disturb the ceremony with a bleeping pager or miss half the reception fielding calls.

Because of the dire threats she’d made, Mandy hadn’t really been expecting to see any messages on her cell. She was shocked when she glanced down at the screen and saw seven missed calls. Mandy’s stomach dropped further when she realised that all the missed calls came from her mother’s number. She quickly pressed a button to call back and held the phone up to her ear.  
“Mom, is everything ok?”   
“Mandy! You’re ok! Thank god!”  
“I’m fine, mom. Is everything alright with you?”  
“You’re not in Virginia?” Mandy’s mom’s voice was brimming with panic and now relief. Mandy just felt confused.  
“I’m in Vermont, remember me telling you? Why did you think I was in Virginia?”  
“The news—the shooting in Virginia—” she paused for a moment, clearly only now just realising that Mandy was completely out of the loop. “You… you haven’t heard? No-one from work has been in touch?”  
“Clearly not,” Mandy ground her teeth, starting to get frustrated. “Can you just tell me what the hell is going on? Was there a school shooting?” The Columbine massacre was still fresh in everyone’s memory.  
“The President was shot at! President Bartlet and his team, and the news channels are all in chaos, they have no idea what’s going on. I had no idea if you’d been hurt, or…” she broke off, with a choking sob.   
Mandy’s heart was suddenly pounding and her mind racing. She scrabbled for her bag and, not bothering to put her shoes back on, ran barefoot to the door of the barn. She now remembered that most of the senior staff had been planning on attending a town forum in Virginia that evening, but she hadn’t concerned herself with the details because she’d known she’d be at the wedding. The President had been shot at. Fuck.  
“I’m fine, mom, I promise,” Mandy gasped as she left the barn and ran towards her car parked 50 yards or so away, barely noticing the pricks of sharp gravel against her bare soles. “But I’ve gotta go, I’ve got to get to Virginia— call me if there’s any update!”  
Mandy hung up before her mother could respond and began rummaging in her purse for her car keys. It was a 45 minute drive to Burlington and then a four hour flight to D.C., but she’d be back in Washington by the morning, at least.  
“Mandy! What the hell are you doing?”   
Mandy turned to see Stella running towards her.   
“There’s an emergency in D.C., I’ve got to go! The President!” Mandy garbled, the combination of alcohol and panic preventing her brain from being able to form a coherent sentence.  
“You can’t drive like this, Mandy!” Stella said incredulously. “You’ve had about ten glasses of champagne. Do you want to get a DUI? And that’s if you don’t manage to drive your car into a tree first.”  
Mandy had to admit she had a point.  
“Can you drive me, then?”  
Stella shook her head. “I’m no less drunk than you. It can’t be that urgent, wait until tomorrow when you’ve sobered up.”  
“It is that important!” Mandy screeched, finding herself getting hysterical. “I work at the White House, and the President has been shot at, and I don’t even know if he’s actually been shot or not, but I still need to be there, and as much as I love to complain about my colleagues, I don’t really want them to have been shot, either.”  
“Oh shit.” Stella finally seemed to have grasped the gravity of the situation. “I’m sure that there will be someone at the reception who’s sober, there’s got to be at least one pregnant woman or something.”

After some frantic questioning of attendees, Mandy finally managed to find a sober person, a cousin of Ulrica’s who had gone teetotal since joining AA two years ago. He wasn’t crazy about driving a woman he’d never met to the airport instead of being at his cousin’s wedding, but eventually relented.   
Mandy sat in the passenger seat of his truck, constantly twiddling the dial to switch between radio stations, but getting depressingly little more news than her mother had given her.  
After what felt like hours, but actually was more like 30 minutes on the quiet evening roads, she hurriedly thanked Ulrica’s cousin and ran into the airport terminal and up to the nearest Delta desk.  
“I need a ticket for your soonest flight to D.C.,” Mandy panted as she leaned against the counter.  
“I”m sorry ma’am,” the check-in clerk shook his head, “We’ve just been notified that all flights to D.C. and the surrounding area have been cancelled until further notice.”  
“Shit!” Mandy kicked the desk, not caring right now what anyone thought of her. “How the hell am I meant to get to D.C.?”  
“The rail stations have been shut too. Your best bet is driving, but you might find road blockades there, too. Not to mention it’s close to a ten hour drive down there.”  
“So I’m stuck here until they catch the gunman?” Mandy asked, not sure whether to shout or cry.

Mandy soon discovered she really was stuck there: when she made outside she discovered that Ulrica’s cousin had already driven off and with him her only means of transport. Instead she had to content herself with sitting down in an airport coffee shop in front of a TV screen showing CNN’s rolling coverage of the shooting. There was nothing she could do now but sit and wait.


	3. Chapter 3

Mandy’s hands shook as they wrapped around the paper coffee cup she was clutching. As she lifted the cup to her mouth to take a gulp, some splashed down onto the wedding party dress she was still wearing. At this point she wasn’t sure if it was caffeine, tiredness or anxiety that was causing the shakes: her whole world felt blurry and confused, her body as physically exhausted as if she’d just run a marathon. She’d been slumped on a hard bench in Burlington airport for god-knew-how-many hours. The planes were still all grounded so she’d had no choice but to wait it out alongside a gaggle of other grounded travellers who’d been planning on catching red eye flights that night. Or rather last night, given how rays of morning sunlight were now scattering across the runways Mandy could see from her spot outside the duty free shop.   
Mandy could barely keep track of the rollercoaster of emotions she’d been through over the past sleepless night; the bright artificial lights and strange liminality of airports meant that she almost wasn’t sure that she wasn’t just imagining the whole thing. The president had been shot. She’d learnt that while camped out in front of the 24 hour news, and her stomach had lurched when the newsreader announced. But then they cut to C.J. briefing the press, reassuring the world that President Bartlet’s injury was relatively minor, and Mandy allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief, releasing the breath she’d been holding in for the last couple of hours.   
“Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman is… is in critical condition after being shot in the chest. He is currently in surgery expected to last 12 to 14 hours and- and we likely won’t have an update until them.” Mandy felt like she’d been slapped as C.J.’s quavering words hit her. Josh had been shot. The words ran around and around through her head as she tried desperately to hang on to C.J.’s words, but the press briefing had devolved into a clamour of questions and C.J. had very few answers to give.

Mandy leaned back, tipping her head up to stare at the high airport terminal ceiling, feeling tears well up in her eyes. Josh annoyed the hell out of her most of the time, and she had cursed him and wished ill on him more than once… but that didn’t mean she actually wanted him to be shot. And there was always their… history. 

Mandy had first met Josh when they were both working on the Hill in the 90s. Her gaydar worked better on girls than guys, but it didn’t take long for her to work out that they had certain things in common. Mandy had been pretty open at college- hell, even if she hadn’t, half her friends were lesbians so most people would have put two and two together- but working in D.C. she’d somehow found herself shoved half back into the closet thanks to her boss’s own take on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.   
For much of the 80s and 90s, Mandy wasn’t exactly hiding who she was, but she wasn’t out and proud either. Josh, on the other hand, had firmly locked himself in the closet, pursuing a policy that largely consisted of flirting loudly and obviously with women but never actually getting around to dating any of them. Mandy couldn’t really blame him for it; Washington was homophobic as hell. And it was because of this sympathy she felt for him, Mandy supposed, she ended up being dragged into Josh’s excellent plan of pretending to be his girlfriend.   
Mandy had never really felt any desire to find herself a beard, and happily dated women on the down-low, while vaguely avoiding her parents’ and colleagues questions about her love life. During this time her relationship with Josh largely centered around giving each other knowing looks of gay-lesbian solidarity across the meeting room table whenever issues like hate crime or gays in the military came up. This peaceful co-existence lasted long enough for Mandy to get together, break up with two different lawyers, and find herself- for the time being- happily single.   
It was a mid November morning when Josh breezed his way into her office and slammed the door shut without so much as knocking or greeting.   
“I need you to come to thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house,” he said as he threw himself down into the chair opposite her desk.   
“Good morning to you, too, Josh,” Mandy replied pointedly.  
“My parents are going crazy, you’ve got to come. My mother is phoning me on a daily basis to tell me I need to get myself a nice Jewish girlfriend.”  
“I see a few issues with what I think you’re proposing,” Mandy said as she put down the highlighter and position paper she’d been working on. “One: I’m not Jewish. Two: I’m a lesbian. Three: you’re gay. So if I’m honest with you, Josh, I don’t really see this relationship as having much of a future.”  
“But my parents don’t need to know that! I just have to keep them placated for one day and then they’ll get off my back for a while. You’ll get a free turkey dinner out of it, what’s not to like? And won’t it satisfy your parents, too?”  
“My parents are total hippies, they couldn’t care less.” Mandy shrugged. “But I could do without my boss constantly trying to set me up with that guy Jeff from Department of Transportation.”

And so Mandy had found herself spending Thanksgiving in Connecticut, making small talk with Josh’s parents and putting on her best straight girl impression. And then there was the congressional Christmas party, and before Mandy knew it, she was suddenly going to most events with Josh. She wasn’t exactly happy about it- hiding who she was, pretending to laugh at Josh’s obnoxious jokes when all she really wanted to do was buy the stunning redhead from the Irish embassy a drink. But did make her life a lot easier: fewer snide pointed remarks, less verbal gymnastics trying to avoid mentioning pronouns. So while she tried to tell herself that she was doing it for Josh, that she could cope just fine with being gay in D.C., Mandy was never quite able to fully convince herself. Perhaps that was why Josh got on her nerves so easily; she knew deep down that they had more in common than she’d like to admit. Mandy hid her true self behind a layer of bravado and arrogance almost as much as Josh did.

But now Josh was in critical condition with a bullet lodged in his chest and Mandy didn’t know whether he’d be able to make one of his tinged with self-loathing homophobic comments or get increasingly loud and defensive every time someone made a remark about his dating life again. But she did know that she would never beard for him again. If he survived this, then Mandy wasn’t going to let him waste his second chance at life by staying shut in the closet. And if not… then Mandy was just going to have to make her way out alone.


	4. Chapter 4

Mandy had left her pager at home and couldn’t get through to any of the senior staff on their cell phones. She presumed that they must turned them off while at the hospital, so that was where she headed to once her plane finally touched down at Dulles. It was now close to 24 hours since the shooting had happened, the signalman had been caught, the roadblocks and air travel restrictions had all been lifted. The chaos that the Washington had been thrown into the previous evening appeared to have all but disappeared, and as Mandy’s taxi made its way across the river into the city, she marvelled at how normal everything seemed. While everyone had been shaken by the shooting, it seemed that life was carrying on for most people, even though Mandy’s world was still turned upside down. 

She scrambled out of the taxi when she arrived at the hospital, throwing a crumpled twenty dollar bill at him as she took in her surroundings. Unlike the relative normality of the rest of D.C., GW bore evidence of the shooting in the secret service agents stationed at regular intervals around the building. For one panicked moment, Mandy thought she’d left her White House ID at home, but was relieved to discover that she’d left it in the inner pocket of her purse. She flashed it at one of the agents who, after studying it closely and to Mandy’s great relief, let her in. There wasn’t the airport-style X-ray machine at the hospital like there was in the White House, so Mandy had to go through a more makeshift system of being run over with a hand-held metal detector and having a security guard rummage through the lipstick and tissues in her purse. She was given the nod of approval and made her way towards the reception desk to enquire to go, but spotted Leo McGarry emerging from an elevator bank halfway between the entrance and welcome desk.

“Leo!” Mandy cried out, relieved to finally see another staffer after hours of solitary travel, accompanied only by her own catastrophizing thoughts. At her shout, he turned towards her, and when realising who it was, scowled at her.  
“Mandy. Nice of you to finally turn up,” his voice dripped with sarcasm. “Where the hell of you been?”  
“Um, Vermont?” Mandy said simply, taken aback by his less than friendly welcome.  
“The President got shot, Josh has been through 14 hours of surgery, Sam has literally been throwing up he’s so anxious, Donna is a total wreck, and C.J.’s giving press briefings with concussion, but don’t you worry yourself about getting down here, have a nice lie in and get your beauty sleep.”  
Part of Mandy couldn’t believe what she was hearing; she’d spent the past day frantically trying to make her way down to Washington, practically tearing her hair out she was so worried about Josh and President Bartlet and frustrated at the planes being grounded. And then there was a part of Mandy that wasn’t even surprised. Leo was an incredible Chief of Staff, fiercely loyal to the President and a political genius. But he’d also treated Mandy and C.J. with a manner that bordered on both contempt and condescension ever since they’d joined the team, and didn’t take a genius to work out what his problem with the two most senior female staffers was.   
“Leo, I really don’t have the energy to debate whether spending my night sitting on the floor of an airport in Vermont waiting for the travel restrictions to Washington to be lifted constitutes having a lie in, so could we maybe just skip that conversation and you tell me what room Josh is in? I know you think I’m a cold-hearted psychopathic bitch, but I’ve actually known Josh for longer than everyone here other than you and Sam, and believe it or not, I do actually care about him.”

So maybe she went a little too far in that outburst, but Mandy was done with taking bullshit. It was like the shooting had flipped a switch in her head, and suddenly Mandy could see clearly that if Washington wasn’t going to accept her on her own terms, then she was done with the city, done with the White House. If she was constantly going to be demeaned for being a woman, to have to hide who she was because the Democratic Party supported gay rights in the abstract theory but didn’t want lesbians anywhere near their party, then she wasn’t going to take it laying down and accept whatever sexist, homophobic terms they gave her. The question was just whether Josh would do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually do really like Leo, I promise! But sadly all of the male characters in TWW are at least a bit sexist, and Leo was often pretty patronising towards female characters and I noticed treated CJ much more harshly than the male senior staffers. Such is the reality of the culture in the White House, I guess.


End file.
